In Kevin's take on my session earlier this week, he suggests I develop a new seminar called "Tips for Dealing with Technology Meltdowns for Webinar or Conference Presenters." I'll start off with a few based on my reflections from this week's Webinar and some from the distant past:
- A sense of humor helps. Have a few jokes in your back pocket.
- Bring chocolate or your favorite candy and eat some if something goes wrong. You'll start wishing more technical glitches
Others? Leave them in the comments. Looking for some tips, read Lindsay Bealko's excellent article on TechSoup about doing online trainings.
Interesting article... For me I have found that yelling at my computer sometimes can relieve my stress :)
Posted by: Cindy | April 26, 2007 at 02:58 AM
Yelling at the computer also entertains your audience. :-)
My worst meltdown was a presentation last fall. I was doing a Web 2.0 presentation at a government facility, only to learn that they blocked EVERY site I wanted to show the audience: Digg, YouTube, Flickr, etc...
Painful! Next time I'll have a bunch of screenshots in my pocket as a backup.
Eric
http://waterwordsthatwork.com
Posted by: Eric | April 26, 2007 at 06:48 AM
Eric,
Yikes, that's painful!
Snagit is a wonderful tool for screenshots that ..
My worst was back in 1993 when I was demoing the first mozilla browser and I was in a room where the phone line was 150 feet away from the computer and my phone cord was only 125 feet and after rearranging the furniture ... I couldn't get a connection because of the type of phone line or something ... That's when I started carrying around transparency overlays (before LCDs) and a recording of a modem handshake ..
B
Posted by: Beth Kanter | April 26, 2007 at 07:36 AM
Cindy,
Banging cha cha on the keyboard is also useful.
Posted by: Beth Kanter | April 26, 2007 at 07:38 AM
In an unfamiliar room in front of about 30 college kids last week my whole power point melted. Stealing an idea from NetSquared's "Pimp My Nonprofit" meetup in DC, I just turned the session into a conversation and made the kids pretend to have my job. They came up with some innovative solutions and campaigns I wouldn't have thought about!
Otherwise, I'm with Cindy and Eric. Yelling is both therapeutic and humorous.
Posted by: Wharman | April 26, 2007 at 08:55 AM
And what do you usually yell?
Posted by: Beth Kanter | April 26, 2007 at 10:35 AM